by Jeff Kamen
‘Yes. Yes I have.’
‘Then surely you will appreciate the reason the enemy’s house must accept us within?’
Moth tried to focus, tried to look away from Kol reaching for the tinderbox. He sucked on his lips to moisten them. Just to inhale the smoke again ... let it percolate ... let its taste rebuild the day, remove the aching ... the aching ...
‘Child? You have an answer for me?’
‘They ... they’d welcome the Fraternity, wouldn’t they?’ he said. When Paget raised his chin, he added, ‘So ... we could tell them anything we wanted.’
‘Indeed,’ Paget said consideredly, ‘the Fraternity, albeit at great risk, may justly be welcomed at any door. But to knock is not enough. There must be a reason. They must believe, child, do you not see this?’
Noticing sparks being chipped, he went to reply, but found himself watching on as Kol drew noisily on the pipestem, his cheeks puffing as he worked.
‘Child, are you with us? Do your thoughts stray so freely now? Do you care for your father no more?’
‘Yes, of course, but I ... I just want ...’
Paget leaned forward, his long fingers interlinked. ‘Then understand me well. If we are to rescue this father of yours alive, we need to make every effort. We must spare nothing and fear nothing, we must try it all and bravely. Above all, the Fraternity hates compromise. What if we only made half an effort to find him?’
As Moth met his eyes, a soft cloud of smoke arose and blew between them. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘you’re right. I’m sorry. But ... what should they believe?’
Paget peered at him uncertainly, grimacing. ‘... Believe?’
‘At the house. We can’t mention my father, can we?’
‘Certainly not, child, your father would remain nameless. But the reason for the dance would be founded on no lie at all, and for this reason the door will verily be opened to us.’
‘So ... what would we tell them?’
‘The truth, child. Just when they least expect it.’
‘The truth?’
Paget turned in his seat, cutting glances at the shutters, at the door. ‘The full truth, no less,’ he said warily, his voice sinking low, ‘for we will go there to dance the welcome of the coming Aeon.’
‘The what?’ Moth whispered. ‘The Aeon?’
‘The Aeon, child,’ Paget said, putting a dark fingernail to his lips as he indicated that they should rise. ‘Come now, let us try a little costume change. Certain news is best attended to in the guise of another. In this case, child, the guise of one stealing back all he holds dear.’
~O~
On throwing open the clothes trunk, Paget began tossing him a formidable assortment of shoes and clothing and accessories. There were crowns, bracelets, long tattered wigs; there were decorated suits and gowns and colourful dresses, some with creases and puncture marks; there were stockings and undergarments of every size and the strips of cloth women wore to keep their breasts in place. As Kol left to go on his errands, he sat there gathering up armful after armful of the garments, with Paget saying as he thrust them at him, ‘A veritable feast, boy, is it not? Now choose well, for may you be a dancer such as the Fraternity has never seen before, first you must clad yourself in the trappings of the trade which will pave your way forward from here.’
Gasping, he sank down under the clothing’s weight as yet more items were hurled upon him, and eventually had to crawl aside in order to see what was there. Then, kneeling upright, he began to measure various items against his body, examining them for their size and texture. He did this for some time, laughing and trying things on and tossing them away, until finally Paget’s eyes settled into a genial blue glare as he urged him to hurry.
‘Anything will do,’ he said, grinding his teeth as Moth continued to deliberate. ‘Dt-dt-dt. Do come along.’
He was holding a pale shirt to his chest, looking down at it uneasily. ‘It’s, ah … it’s nice,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘There’s blood on it.’
‘Child, these are costumes of great drama, not the liveries of a common school marm. They’re supposed to have blood on them. Now, get a move on. I want to see what spectacle the enemy has in store for it. For this beyond doubt is how we shall attack.’
He looked down at the brownish stains again, then uncertainly at Paget. ‘So ... what are you going to wear?’
‘The costumes are for you, child,’ Paget said in a kindly manner. He gestured down at his skin-coloured shirt with a flourish of the hand. ‘I’m already dressed. Done. Cooked. Complete.’
‘But so am ... but I-I don’t understand. Why am I the only one who —’
‘Chdt-dt-dt. Just put it on, child, we have work to do.’
‘But I don’t …’
‘Silence, boy. Our mission is to invade the house and divert the enemy with regal dancing. Question me not and remember — we have high and demanding standards to live up to at all times, and live up to them we must. Now clad yourself.’ With that, Paget hastened him into pulling on the shirt, then brought over a loose-flowing robe.
The robe was made for a larger physique and Moth stood adjusting the sleeves as Paget handed him a pair of stitched shoes. He sat aside to try them on, wincing as he did so. Picking at his feet in discomfort, he looked up to find Paget baring a massacre of twisted teeth as he motioned him to rise.
‘They’re, ah, they’re a bit tight,’ he said, to which Paget retorted, ‘Tight, child, did you say? Tight? Would you countenance for more than one second the thought of your poor dear father being punished all the more for your tardiness? You wish him bleeding for you? Starving to death? Of course not,’ he said, and clapping his hands, he sent Moth walking round the room with his arms outstretched, encouraging him to dip aside and turn, then trot a few steps and turn back again, even to twist and leap and thrash his hair around — and in this way gave him his first taste of what might be expected as their plans matured.
On taking a break at last, shivering, he sat at the table with his eyes fixed on the glowing pipebowl as it came his way. He seized it with cold and trembling hands and sat listening as Paget prepared him more fully for his role, divulging to him secrets relating to the Aeon, and the advent of the coming age.
Staring, he followed trains of thought mirroring the growth of mere cells into bundles of corpuscles, and the growth of these bundles into the precious entities of life around him which he had somehow come to take for granted. He learned of certain configurations of date and place connected to transmission lines within the corkscrew microstructure of the biosphere, learned of the impact of certain vectors within these ancient systems acting in ways not dissimilar to birds following seasonal migratory pathways, albeit, as Paget conceded, these systems were wired as much to chance and faith as the gridlines of science and numerical processing ...
He listened with all his focus. Inhaling, pale in the cheek, mesmerised by the visions conjured up by Paget’s words, it seemed as though the crust of the world had been removed to reveal a foreign landscape. And not just one landscape, nor a landscape confined to the restrictive and narrow plane of corporality, for there was more, much more. He was given to understand chemistry as a war of elemental marriages and false alliances and undetected treasons; he saw how the planet itself had been conceived in the tidal void and how its planned evolution had been misconstrued, and how the blights it had suffered had come about through ignorance of the Fraternity’s founding message to the people ...
‘Indeed, child,’ Paget informed him, regarding him from beneath lowered eyelids, ‘Kol and I are but the latest of a long line of others. We go back far away, almost unto the darkness.’
Paget then took from the trunk some parchment and pens, drawing for his rapt pupil symbols that less than twenty individuals had seen since primitive peoples first drew inscriptions in plant juice and charcoal and blood. He taught him how the bulb dreams of the petals contained within it,
and how the grub yearns for flight; he gave accounts of unequivocal journeys rendered suspect and out of synchronisation at a single turning; told of beginnings running into ends, and of strange reversals and familiar paths returned along that came to new and unaccountable termini as if the very matter of things had been altered; as if time had unwound itself and cause and effect had merged together in defiance of what was known.
By the time he’d come to an end, it was pitchblack outside and the room was lit by lamps.
A little earlier, upon cleaning the floor, the maid had gone home, leaving Kol to bring food to them on his return, a plate of fried ribs that they washed down with water and a fresh round of smouldering herbs.
For once, Moth found himself eating with an appetite, and as he sat back in his chair to smoke and learn more, learn everything he could, Paget revealed how it was that Kol and himself had been forced to go about under the guise of ordinary showmen in order to protect the true nature of their enterprise. An undertaking, he made clear, for which they’d received no stipend, nor had any expectation of reward other than their passion for the work itself. As if to prove his point, he went behind the screens and returned with a long wooden flute and a tambourine of stretched hide, which he rattled as he sat again, looking the instruments over.
‘Now, child,’ he said, setting them down, ‘you have a full picture of our approach. What we do in that dread household shall enrich us all, for in helping to bring about the new era, we shall also deliver your beloved father to you. By what means we perform the extraction is for us to debate, yet in agreeing that our mechanism is the dance, we agree to put every effort into our preparations. Is that not so?’
Moth took out the pipestem and nodded. ‘Of course,’ he croaked.
‘Very good. Now, while I deliberate on the dance’s constitution, I require you to improve yourself by removing that beard and scrubbing the dirt from your skin. Both dance and dancer alike must be highly presentable and authentic. On no account must the enemy suspect this to be a venture new to us.’
‘Better get that costume right, then,’ muttered Kol, picking his nose. He tilted his head, looking at what Moth was wearing. ‘Choose it yourself?’ he said.
Moth glanced awkwardly at Paget. ‘Well, I didn’t really ...’
‘Thought so.’ He turned to Paget with a nod. ‘Doesn’t go with the hair.’
‘Nonsense, man,’ Paget scoffed, ‘he’ll do perfectly well. Simplicity is all.’
‘I’m telling you, we’re not going to get anywhere with this. May as well go in as chimney sweeps.’
Paget cut his colleague a glance, splaying his teeth. ‘Mr Kol, I have no wish for young master here to end up as a nasty little drazel in a flash-house, thank you very much.’ He tossed back his hair, then swept him a coy little glance as an afterthought, peering through pinched fingers as he added, ‘What exactly did you have in mind?’
Kol shrugged. ‘Curls, I thought.’
Paget fluttered his lashes at this, as though startled. ‘Curls, indeed,’ he said, then a moment later he seemed to wince in distaste. ‘And why, pray, not hairless altogether? Hmmm? For is it not so that mad, bald and blind we come into this world, and so again must be ...?’
As Kol produced his knife, Moth looked from one man to the other. ‘What ...’ he whispered, ‘what are you going to do to me?’
Paget beamed at him winningly. ‘Fear not, child, fear not. Mr Kol will adapt you most nicely first thing in the morning, following breakfast. You should be grateful, he’s very thorough. Then you must begin your practising in full. Under my guidance you will train and retrain, hearse and rehearse, until your body is fit for its duties. But a word of warning to you.’ He held up a solitary black fingernail. ‘Woe to him who treats the Fraternity with mockery in such a plan as this. Woe indeed.’ His eyes seemed to deepen, ossify. ‘For in linking itself to the Aeon, the dance will build for us associations as yet unreckonable, unknown even to myself. It will build as a snowball builds upon the downy hillside. The dance is power, child. Through it, we assert our will. Through it, we turn mere bystanders into fierce allies. We build ranks of men willing to fight and perish on our behalf, some acting with no hope of payment at all, merely the promise of seeing the truth come to fruition. In practice, then, you must needs understand that the work of the Fraternity is linked to the fabric of the universe. All our fates are joined in this. Ours, yours, and your father’s. Our very fates, boy. It is not to be trifled with.’
Moth nodded, growing dry in the mouth.
‘Chdt-dt-dt. Good, child. Now, time is short. We stand to gain everything, but if we fail to plan effectively in every detail, I greatly fear for the consequencesh.’ He tapped his clapperboards. ‘I fear greatly indeed.’
Chapter 77 — Long Ago In Flames
Storms trapped the women in the barren uplands, with huge thunderclaps arriving in stinging rain. The skies seemed to rock as they emptied.
With the gulleys overrun and the roads quickly swamped, there was nothing for them to do but gather fuel and stay sheltered. After a few days the rumbling stopped, and they went out for more firewood and cooked pigeon flesh in the heavy evening twilight.
They drove on from there with boulders of mist rolling down from shrouded peaks on high, crumbling as they descended, atomising, a dense and clinging vapour that soaked them on impact like the downfall of phantom waterlands, and which strung with pearls the joyless webs pinioned in the firs. Everything opaque and muffled. Lost. Surrounding them prognathic vaults of rock without edge or depth, the cruel splendour of the ravines below dissolving from view.
They rested by a stream, and Jaala lay with her arms crossed in the crampedness of the back of the cart, Radjík breathing softly nearby. She listened to the icy water trickling, interminably breaking and reforming on the stones.
In time the images reappeared. The same scenes again. People penned in like animals. The children running to the fence crying, their faces tear-stained and filthy.
She was running to them with others — women, all of them women — and the screams grew shrill and masked figures were pulling them away. People were running from the town, down a darkening road, away from the flickering. She had the impression of tall buildings as before, but then they were running down below somewhere, quickly descending. The sky behind them glowing red. At some point flames were visible around the huge vault-like door, then it swung shut and only the screams remained …
Icy water trickling.
She looked dully across at Radjík, checking she was asleep.
She waited a minute more, then did something she’d promised she wouldn’t do. Wanting to know more, she pushed; pushed at the flickerings.
Shuddering in her mind then, a large imposing shape like a door that was not merely a door. She was seeing as through a lens a huge black entrance leading into the earth, towards which she must run, and only run.
Running to escape.
Sweat stood on her dark and wrinkled brow.
A sense coming to her of entering a dungeon-like region of darkness and dread. She let herself run on, following the impressions swarming at her, following them down a route that dipped away like a pit mouth, the walls long and black and interspersed with grids of light that disappeared soon after entering ...
Chapter 78 — Dance Lessons
‘Child?’
Moth jolted, coughing, covering his face.
‘Aha, young slugabed awakes.’
‘Wh-what …’
‘Up, child, your Fraternity requires you.’
He rolled over to find Paget looming over him, clicking his nails. ‘Do you not listen?’ he said tiredly. ‘Am I to call up hour on hour like a crier of wares? Hmm? I have come to see what has become of you.’
‘I … I must have been asleep. I didn’t hear you.’
‘You do still have ears, may I enquire? You still have the function of listening?’
‘Yes. Yes, I can hear.’ He reached shakily for some water, the
n looked up in concern. ‘What?’ he whispered, for Paget stood cutting suspicious glances around the little room as if something was not right there. Not quite in place.
His eye lingered on the glider, its fastened wings renewed in parts, then found the plate with its half-gnawed ribs. He leaned down again, regarding Moth with a candid blue gaze. ‘And you still eat, I trust? You are maintaining your manly strength?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, I’m eating.’
‘Very good. The dance demands much of us and we must be equal to it at every moment. Now kindly join us downstairs, fed and washed, if you please. Remember, the Fraternity loves only those of clean limb and leg. They are its favourite, its very pride and joy.’
‘What … what’s happening?’
‘We’ve got one.’
‘… Got what?’ he whispered.
‘A girl,’ Paget drawled, scanning the room again. ‘Hurry, child,’ he added, and with a flourish left the room.
Moth got up clutching the bedframe, gasping. Then stood half bent, his hands on his knees to support himself. They’d spent the best part of a week testing his ability to leap and stretch and twist himself in expression of Paget’s flute trillings, and it was draining him. Satisfied that he’d be able to carry the mission off, Paget had despatched Kol to find a dance partner with whom to distract the masters of the house whilst the rescue was underway. He hoped that the girl had been well chosen, had the skills and guile they needed: Fraternity members were under strict orders not to reveal details of the mission to those they had need to call upon, and he’d begged Paget to ensure that anyone they took in trust was made fully aware of the consequences of betrayal. ‘Indeed, child,’ Paget had said, ‘in such cases, the Cage will be deployed without mercy.’
Before he left the room, he spent a few minutes checking on the repairs he’d undertaken the night before. Initially, Paget had been uneasy about acquiring any new materials, fearing that just such activity might arouse suspicion in the city’s marketplaces; but after he’d insisted, reminding him that he and his father might be forced to escape at all possible speed, Paget had granted his wish, and since that time had ordered Kol to fetch almost everything he asked for.